Botanical classification/cultivar designation: Lavandula stoechas L. cultivar Madrid Pink Improved.
The present Invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Lavender plant, botanically known as Lavandula stoechas L., and hereinafter referred to by the name xe2x80x98Madrid Pink Improvedxe2x80x99.
The new Lavender is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in Kulnura, New South Wales, Australia. The objective of the breeding program was to create new Lavender cultivars with large and attractive flowers.
The new Lavender originated from a cross-pollination made by the Inventor of the Lavandula stoechas L. cultivar Bella Pink, disclosed in U.S. Plant Pat. No. 12,599, as the female, or seed, parent with the Lavandula stoechas L. cultivar Bee Dazzle, not patented, as the male, or pollen, parent. The new Lavender was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a single flowering plant within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination grown in a controlled environment in Kulnura, New South Wales, Australia in 1997.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar by terminal cuttings taken at Kulnura, New South Wales, Australia, since 1997, has shown that the unique features of this new Lavender are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.
Plants of the cultivar Madrid Pink Improved have not been observed under all possible environmental conditions. The phenotype may vary somewhat with variations in environment such as temperature and light intensity without, however, any variance in genotype.
The following traits have been repeatedly observed and are determined to be the unique characteristics of xe2x80x98Madrid Pink Improvedxe2x80x99. These characteristics in combination distinguish xe2x80x98Madrid Pink Improvedxe2x80x99 as a new and distinct cultivar:
1. Upright and mounded plant habit.
2. Freely branching, dense and bushy plant form.
3. Early flowering habit.
4. Purple-colored flowers with showy light pink-colored terminal flower bracts.
Plants of the new Lavender differ from plants of the parent cultivars and other known Lavender cultivars primarily in flower and terminal bract color, terminal bract size, inflorescence size and peduncle length.